Speaking of bad technicals, has anyone checked out the Tanker chart lately? Its a horror show. The mantra of the delusional shareholders is "its consolidating at lower levels, recovery is just around the corner".

JUST IN..Apple's New iPad Doesn't Work With LTE Networks In Germanynasdaq.comFRANKFURT -( Dow Jones)- The third generation of Apple Inc.'s ( AAPL) iPad tablet computer may be lacking a major feature to lure customers in Germany, Europe's largest economy.

Due to technical reasons, the new gadget is incompatible with the fourth- generation long-term evolution networks that are currently being set up in the country, spokespeople for the three operators rolling out LTE in Germany said Monday. Those companies are Deutsche Telekom AG ( DTE.XE), Vodafone Group PLC ( VOD.LN) and Telefonica SA ( TEF).

Apple presented the new iPad last week, adding a more advanced display, faster wireless communications through the use of LTE, and other features. Telecom operators across the board have started to roll out LTE mobile networks, which allow users to get much faster downloads on devices.

Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone paid a combined EUR4.1 billion in Germany's 2010 spectrum auction to secure new frequencies for setting up such high-speed networks.

The legal fallout continues over Google’s decision to circumvent privacy settings on the iPhone. Court records show that there are now at least 14 class action lawsuits that accuse Google ( NSDQ: GOOG) of breaching the Wiretap Act and that demand the company pay millions to phone owners.

The controversy turns on a ham-fisted attempt by the search giant to promote its Google+ product. Stanford research Jonathan Mayer revealed in February that the company used a piece of code to trick Apple’s mobile browser, which blocks third party ad tracking, into thinking a user had given it permission to install an advertising cookie.

Google’s gambit coincided with reports of numerous third party app developers engaged in similar shenanigans. The company’s deep pockets, however, make it a tempting target for class action lawyers who hope to take a generous cut of what could be an expensive settlement.

Lawyers’ eyes are lighting up because Google’s actions may technically violate the Wiretap Act, a federal law that makes it illegal to record other people’s communication and that sets out actual dollar amounts that a violator must pay. This matters because courts have responded to some invasion of privacy lawsuits that were not related to the Wiretap Act —like FriendFinder showing your picture on Facebook without permission— by stating that they aren’t worth anything in money terms.

Past incidents like Google Buzz and Facebook’s Beacon suggest that the new parade of lawsuits will result in Google settling the suits by paying a pot of money to self-appointed privacy advocates.

Lawsuits have been filed in Florida, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Kansas, Texas, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi and Washington, DC. They will likely be consolidated into a single case in coming months.

No one knows the next chapter in the future of books, but lawyers in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department claim to know precisely how this industry in transition must be structured and operated, down to the correct price for an e-book. The government's certainty is the basis of a threatened price-fixing lawsuit against Apple and top book publishers.

At issue is an agreement publishers made with Steve Jobs in 2010, as he was about to launch the iPad. At that time, Amazon's Kindle had 90% of the market for e-books. Book publishers had imported the "wholesale model" from the print world, where they sold retailers books for roughly half the recommended cover price. This made sense in the bricks-and-mortar world of returns of unsold books and expensive inventory. It was in the interests of publishers and booksellers to sell at whatever the market would bear.

But in the e-reader world, Amazon could sell e-books at very low prices, usually for $9.99, losing money on many of them. Amazon's strategy was to price books as loss leaders to support sales of the Kindle, hoping to keep the device's near-total market share.

Publishers wanted competition among e-readers instead of a Kindle monopoly and worried that the subsidized price established artificially low prices. Jobs proposed that book publishers move to the "agency model": Publishers set the price for each book and e-reader companies take an agreed percentage of the revenues. "We told the publishers . . . you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway," Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. Jobs recalled that publishers then "went to Amazon and said, 'You're going to sign an agency contract or we're not going to give you the books.

Government antitrust lawyers interpret these comments as a smoking gun proving collusion among Jobs and the top publishers (including HarperCollins, a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal). But Jobs's proposal was not about price fixing. It was about treating book publishers like every other industry. This is the same 30% revenue share that Apple takes for selling newspapers, magazines and games on the iPad. Publishers didn't have to collude to accept it. While publishers ended up earning less per book because of the revenue share to e-reader companies, they regained control over their property.

Ironically, the government had spent much of the pre-digital 1980s and 1990s filing lawsuits arising from the wholesale model. The issue then was also technological change—advances in supply-chain logistics that created the then-giant booksellers including Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and Crown Books. Independent booksellers complained that publishers gave them a lesser discount than the volume discount they gave big chains. Years of antitrust litigation were a total waste of time: Almost every superstore has succumbed to competition from online sellers, chiefly Amazon.

Government lawyers failed to learn that industries undergoing massive change brought on by technology are likelier to be flailing for sustainable business models than flouting market power to fix prices. Book publishers are still trying to predict the full impact of technology. As consumer choice widens, some people want beautifully produced printed books, while others want enhanced e-books with video and other graphics. There are e-books selling for 99 cents and others at premium prices. Perhaps a hardcover should come with access to digital versions. Contrary to the assumption by government lawyers, there's no reason to think the price of e-books must be $9.99.

Amazon still has a large share of the e-book market, but it's no longer 90%. This should have made antitrust regulators happy, instead of leading them to threaten to sue Apple and the publishers. Instead, as Authors Guild president Scott Turow wrote to members, "our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition."

Steve Jobs was at the center of one of the better known disconnects between Silicon Valley and Washington. President Obama had asked him for a one-on-one meeting in 2010. Jobs told the president he was "headed for a one-term presidency" because Washington was smothering the innovation that had been the country's growth engine. According to his biography, when Jobs organized a dinner of Internet executives with Mr. Obama, he concluded, "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done." He added, "It infuriates me."

Jobs was called many things when he was alive, good and bad. We can only imagine what he would say in response to "price fixer" being added to the list by an overreaching, innovation-suppressing government.

>>Amazon still has a large share of the e-book market, but it's no longer 90%. This should have made antitrust regulators happy, instead of leading them to threaten to sue Apple and the publishers. Instead, as Authors Guild president Scott Turow wrote to members, "our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition."<<

Apple ( AAPL) may sell more than a millioniPads when the new model goes on sale this Friday at retail outlets, according to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster.

Munster, who has an Overweight rating on Apple shares and a $670 price target, writes that Apple has already sold out of inventory set aside for pre-orders, which began last Wednesday, the same day the company unveiled the new model. . A one-million day on Friday, he writes, could bode well for total iPad sales this quarter ending in March, given that the Street has been modeling 10.1 million iPads. (Munster cites a USA Todayarticle on Saturday by Geri ColemanTucker and Jefferson Graham quoting Apple saying inventory sold out after Wednesday’s orders.)

Munster notes the company sold 300,000 units when the first iPad went on sale on April 3rd of 2010. Apple never offered sales figures for the launch day for iPad 2 last year, on March 11th, probably because supply was “severely constrained” at the time, opines Munster.

But pre-orders, which started the same day as retail availability that day, sold out within hours, he notes.

He also notes that at a similar juncture in the life of the iPhone — 50 million had been sold when the iPhone 4 came out, versus 55 million iPads to date — the new model sold 600,000 pre-orders on June 15th, 2010, and then sold 1.7 million units on June 26th when it came out at retail.

Concludes Munster,

Even if iPad sales are less than 10m in Mar-12, we see it as a win-win given investors will attribute the miss to a slowdown ahead of the new iPad and start to anticipate a strong rebound in the June-12 quarter

IDG News Service - Apple, along with five e-book publishers, must address all of the European Commission's antitrust concerns before a price-fixing investigation can be closed, warned the European Union's competition chief on Monday.

The commission launched an investigation into allegations of e-book cartel price-fixing last December, but Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said no talks regarding an agreement to close the case are taking place. He said the case over so-called "agency pricing" would only be closed if the accused resolve all concerns that have been raised.

"Because the ebooks market is growing very fast, we are worried about the development of practices that do not exist for physical books, such as collusion between publishers on prices," Almunia said.

Harper Collins, Hachette Livre, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan are all accused of colluding with Apple to fix the price of e-books, forcing up prices for consumers and attempting to squeeze rivals such as Amazon out of the market.

Almunia said that the commission is working closely with the U.S. Department of Justice on the matter. If the accused companies reach an agreement to resolve objections that have been raised, they could avoid a hefty fine.

Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @BrusselsGeek or email tips and comments to jennifer_baker@idg.com.